Tag Archives: bus

Dispatch From Martinique

Bus Queen

I saw the queen of England on the bus the other day. I was heading to work and everyone was quiet, tired. She got on and carried the whole universe in her stride – she straddled across, heaving tree trunk legs under a squat, ample body, bright orange shirt against her rich brown skin, wiry glasses, wiry hair pulled haphazardly into two little-girl bunches bouncing off the top of her head in bright pink scrunchies. A young woman moved her legs to make room for her as she made her way down the aisle.

‘Don’t move for me, chérie,’ the queen-crone said, in a shrill voice that rung out through the whole bus like the cry of a bird, ‘I’m not fat yet! I’m still young and beautiful, I’m the queen of England!’

She sat beside a young man in hoodie and headphones and continued talking in her raspy, loud, old-crone voice, to all of us. She may have been from Guadeloupe because she kept saying, ‘The Martinican people are beautiful, beautiful people!’, perhaps in recognition of the young woman’s gesture. She chatted and joked in Creole and cracked herself up – and threw back her head and laughed, but a laugh that erupted out of her like water shooting out of an underground volcano, pierced the air and shot through the whole bus. The young man fell back into his seat melodramatically in a gesture of distaste, his music competing with the old queen’s bird cries. The middle-aged women and me smiled to hear her. No shits she gave. She carried right on her own wave.

EEEEEEEeeeeeehhheeeeeheeeheeeeeeeheeeeeeeeeeeeee

When she left, the magic she pushed into all of us lifted up and stayed in the air for a stop, another stop, a few more. I have a feeling the earth is turning thanks to her.